Abstract
In hospital isolation rooms, door operation can lead to containment failures and airborne pathogen dispersal into the surrounding spaces. Sliding doors can reduce the containment failure arising from the door motion induced airflows, as compared to the hinged doors that are typically used in healthcare facilities. Such airflow leakage can be measured quantitatively using tracer gas techniques, but detailed observation of the turbulent flow features is very difficult. However, a comprehensive understanding of these flows is important when designing doors to further reduce such containment failures. Experiments and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling, by using Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) flow solver, were used to study airflow patterns in a full-scale mock-up, consisting of a sliding door separating two identical rooms (i.e. one isolation room attached to an antechamber). A single sliding door open/ hold-open/ closing cycle was studied. Additional variables included human passage through the doorway and imposing a temperature difference between the two rooms. The general structures of computationally-simulated flow features were validated by comparing the results to smoke visualizations of identical full-scale experimental set-ups. It was found that without passage the air volume leakage across the doorway was first dominated by vortex shedding in the wake of the door, but during a prolonged hold-open period a possible temperature difference soon became the predominant driving force. Passage generates a short and powerful pulse of leakage flow rate even if the walker stops to wait for the door to open.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Beck WC (1966). A test clean-room for evaluating contamination. Guthrie Clinic Bulletin, 36: 40.
Chen YJ, Shao CP (2013). Suppression of vortex shedding from a rectangular cylinder at low Reynolds numbers. Journal of Fluids and Structures, 43: 15–27.
Choi JI, Edwards JR (2012). Large-eddy simulation of human-induced contaminant transport in room compartments. Indoor Air, 22: 77–87.
Ducros F, Bieder U, Cioni O, Fortin T, Fournier B, Fauchet G, Quéméré P (2010). Verification and validation considerations regarding the qualification of numerical schemes for LES for dilution problems. Nuclear Engineering and Design, 240: 2123–2130.
Edge BA, Paterson EG, Settles GS (2005). Computational study of the wake and contaminant transport of a walking human. Journal of Fluids Engineering, 127: 967–977.
Fernstrom A, Goldblatt M (2013). Aerobiology and its role in the transmission of infectious diseases. Journal of Pathogens, 2013: 493960.
Hang J, Li Y, Jin R (2014). The influence of human walking on the flow and airborne transmission in a six-bed isolation room: Tracer gas simulation. Building and Environment, 77: 119–134.
Hang J, Li Y, Ching WH, Wei J, Jin R, Liu L, Xie X (2015). Potential airborne transmission between two isolation cubicles through a shared anteroom. Building and Environment, 89: 264–278.
Hayden CS, Johnston OE, Hughes RT, Jensen PA (1998). Air volume migration from negative pressure isolation rooms during entry/exit. Applied Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 13: 518–527.
Jayaraju ST (2009). Study of the air flow and aerosol transport in the human upper airway using LES and DES methodologies. PhD Thesis, Vrije Universiteit, Belgium.
Kalliomäki P, Saarinen P, Tang JW, Koskela H (2015). Airflow patterns through single hinged and sliding doors in hospital isolation rooms. International Journal of Ventilation, 14: 111–126.
Kalliomäki P, Saarinen P, Tang JW, Koskela H (2016). Airflow patterns through single hinged and sliding doors in hospital isolation rooms—Effect of ventilation, flow differential and passage. Building and Environment, 107: 154–168.
Licina D, Melikov A, Sekhar C, Tham KW (2015). Human convective boundary layer and its interaction with room ventilation flow. Indoor Air, 25: 21–35.
Lin Y, Savill M, Vadlamani NR, Jefferson-Loveday R (2013). Wallresolved large eddy simulation over NACA0012 airfoil. International Journal of Aerospace Sciences, 2: 149–162.
Massman WJ (1998). A review of the molecular diffusivities of H2O, CO2, CH4, CO, O3, SO2, NH3, N2O, NO, and NO2 in air, O2 and N2 near STP. Atmospheric Environment, 32: 1111–1127.
Moyer ZM (2003). The human aerodynamic wake and the design of a portal to sample it. Master Thesis, The Pennsylvania State University, USA.
Nicoud F, Ducros F (1999). Subgrid-scale stress modelling based on the square of the velocity gradient tensor. Flow, Turbulence and Combustion, 62: 183–200.
Nielsen PV (2012). Air distribution systems and cross-infection risk in the hospital sector. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Industrial Ventilation, Paris, France.
Pavelchak N, DePersis RP, London M, Stricof R, Oxtoby M, DiFerdinando G Jr, Marshall E (2000). Identification of factors that disrupt negative air pressurization of respiratory isolation rooms. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, 21: 191–195.
Saarinen PE, Kalliomäki P, Tang JW, Koskela H (2015). Large eddy simulation of air escape through a hospital isolation room single hinged doorway—Validation by using tracer gases and simulated smoke videos. PLoS ONE, 10(7): e0130667.
Saarinen P, Siikonen T (2016). Simulation of HVAC flow noise sources with an exit vent as an example. International Journal of Ventilation, 15: 45–66.
Salim SM, Ong KC, Cheah SC (2011). Comparison of RANS, URANS and LES in the prediction of airflow and pollutant dispersion. In: Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science, San Francisco, USA.
Shaw BH (1976). Heat and mass transfer by convection through large rectangular openings in vertical partitions. PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, UK.
Shih YC, Chiu CC, Wang O (2007). Dynamic airflow simulation within an isolation room. Building and Environment, 42: 3194–3209.
Strykowski PJ, Sreenivasan KR (1990). On the formation and suppression of vortex ‘shedding’ at low Reynolds numbers. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 218: 71–107.
Tang JW, Eames I, Li Y, Taha YA, Wilson P, Bellingan G, Ward KN, Breuer J (2005). Door-opening motion can potentially lead to a transient breakdown in negative-pressure isolation conditions: The importance of vorticity and buoyancy airflows. Journal of Hospital Infection, 61: 283–286.
Tang JW, Li Y, Eames I, Chan PKS, Ridgway GL (2006). Factors involved in the aerosol transmission of infection and control of ventilation in healthcare premises. Journal of Hospital Infection, 64: 100–114.
Tang JW, Nicolle A, Pantelic J, Klettner CA, Su R, et al. (2013). Different types of door-opening motions as contributing factors to containment failures in hospital isolation rooms. PLoS ONE, 8(6): e66663.
Tritton DJ (1977). Physical Fluid Dynamics. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
Werner D, Höhener P (2003). In situ method to measure effective and sorption-affected gas-phase diffusion coefficients in soils. Environmental Science & Technology, 37: 2502–2510.
Wu Y, Gao N (2014). The dynamics of the body motion induced wake flow and its effects on the contaminant dispersion. Building and Environment, 82: 63–74.
Xie X, Li Y, Chwang ATY, Ho PL, Seto WH (2007). How far droplets can move in indoor environments—Revisiting the Wells evaporationfalling curve. Indoor Air, 17: 211–225.
Zhuang R, Li X, Tu J (2014). Should different gaseous contaminants be treated differently in CFD indoor simulations? In: Proceedings of Air Pollution 2014, Opatija, Croatia.
Acknowledgements
This study was mainly funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation (TEKES, grant number 40301/10).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Video 1. Simulated vorticity z-component near the doorway on the horizontal plane 1 m above the floor during the door-alone cycle. Negative vorticity means clockwise and positive counter-clockwise rotation. Horizontal component of flow direction is indicated by arrows with constant length.
Video 2. Simulated smoke video combining two different smoke visualizations, and the corresponding experimental smoke videos.
Video 3. Updated video 1, after addition of passage and rescaling. The inlet in the upper left corner shows the vortex cores as illustrated by drawing two isosurfaces 150 s-2 and 500 s-2 of the absolute value of the second invariant of the velocity gradient tensor. Door-generated vortices are too weak to be seen in this scale.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Saarinen, P., Kalliomäki, P., Koskela, H. et al. Large-eddy simulation of the containment failure in isolation rooms with a sliding door—An experimental and modelling study. Build. Simul. 11, 585–596 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-017-0422-8
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-017-0422-8